Turning 40

I went to another Human Powertrain Warranty Expiration gathering this weekend. You might know them by the more common term – 40^th birthday party.

I’m not sure when the trend began, but the 40^th birthday seems to be the really big celebration these days. The spouse of the warranty expiree usually throws a huge party. My wife took me on a surprise three-day weekend getaway with friends. I threw my wife a surprise party at our house with about a million people. We had friends who rented out an entire restaurant. It’s crazy!

The parties are fun, but they are a conflicted celebration at best. What are we really celebrating? No one wanted to turn 40. There has never been a 20- or 30-something on earth who has thought, “Can’t wait to turn 40! That will be amazing!”

Every human approaches “The Big 4-0” with the same thought: “Holy %&*#! I’m about to turn 40! How the hell did that happen!?” Every person under 40 at the party is thinking, “better them than me,” and every guest over 40 is thinking, “that poor bastard has no idea what they’re in for.”

That’s because 40 is the year that your entire body stops working like it used to. Your vision blurs. Your hearing degrades. Your feet and knees hurt. Your tendons and ligaments become brittle and weak, as if your muscles are now attached to your bones with those wooden coffee stir sticks. Your hips ache if you sit for too long. You can cripple your lower back for weeks by stepping off the bottom stair a little weird. You can actually hurt yourself by sleeping.

The 40^th birthday is the turning point from “Hey, I’m another year older!” to “Hey, I survived another year!”

Our recent 40-year-old club inductee was treated by her husband to a Mexican cruise to celebrate with friends. We couldn’t make the boat ride, but we were able to attend the follow-up celebration back here, where we all went out bar-hopping. A common theme of 40^th birthday parties is to pretend to be able to drink and dance like you’re still 25. This is called the denial phase.

(Although, no matter how deep you are into the denial phase, or how much you want to be young again, if you’re over 40, you’re still thinking, “Why is it so loud in here? I don’t understand why we need all these flashing strobe lights and that fog machine, and I would really appreciate it if we could turn on a few more overhead lights so I don’t kill myself on those steps.”)

The denial phase is fun, but invariably, the reality phase sets in the next day. Case in point: our bar-hopping adventure ended up at a country dance joint called the Crazy Horse, and they had a mechanical bull.

Do you know why there are no mechanical bulls in places like Starbucks, or McDonald’s, where they don’t sell alcohol?

I do.

Do you know why there are no professional rodeo bull riders over the age of 22?

I do.  

Do you know how sore you are the next day after attempting to ride a mechanical bull at one o’clock in the morning?

I have no idea.

You thought I rode it? Ha! Are you crazy? I’m 46. I know better by now!

The birthday girl woke up complaining that her arm was awfully sore, though. And her butt. And legs. And back… Happy birthday! Welcome to the Over-40 club. It was a fun party.

I’d say I can’t wait for your 41^st birthday party next year, but let’s be serious… nobody celebrates turning 41.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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A Shotgun Wedding?

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would regale you with the heartwarming tale about the night I met my wife. Unfortunately, the night I met my wife was pretty un-eventful, besides the fact that I met the love of my life. So instead, I will regale you with the shocking, explosive, frightening, and downright weird tale about the night after the night I met my wife. It’s a tale of a bar, a truck, a barefoot man, a policeman, a bathrobe, and a shotgun.

I met my wife in a bar. It was only my first or second time at this particular bar, but she had been there for thirty-two nights in a row. She and her best friend were going for a combined personal record. It was her initiative and dedication to the endeavor that drew me to her. We were both college students in San Luis Obispo, CA, and she was working at a pizza place that summer. She would get off work at midnight and meet her friend at Bull’s Tavern to shut the place down. We met one evening, talked until closing, and said goodnight.

I thought she was really neat-o, so having heard about their record-breaking attendance goal, I had a good idea of where I might find her again the next evening. After missing her a few times, between the bar and the pizza place, we finally connected, and had another delightful evening of bar-booth conversation. This was the kind of bar where “delightful conversation” means you sat in a red naugahyde booth, taking turns shouting into each other’s ears, in an attempt to carry on a conversation over the AC/DC blaring out of the jukebox.

After the last-call light came on at 2 am – this was back when we could stay up until 2 am – we walked back to the pizza place where my truck was parked, and carried on our conversation in the cab of my Ford F150. By about 3am I had convinced her that kissing me wouldn’t be so bad, and just when I was about to plant one on her, a sonic boom came rolling down the street. It would have been much cooler if we had heard the explosion as we kissed, but you just can’t plan for these kinds of things.

She said, and I quote, “That sounded like a 12 gauge!”
I replied, scoffing-ly, “There is no way that was a 12 gauge shotgun. It was probably just a car backfiring.” In my head I was thinking, “Cool. She knows her shotguns. But that couldn’t have been a shotgun.”

Roughly four minutes later a barefoot man in a bathrobe came walking down the street carrying a 12-gauge shotgun.

Now, if I can paint the scene for you. It is past 3:00 in the morning, and the town has completely shut down. We are the only car parked on the street, directly across from the pizza parlor. The only other car that we can see belongs to a police officer who is parked in a parking lot across the intersection from the pizza place. The police officer is standing outside of his car, chatting with a man on a bicycle. They have apparently not heard the big bang, and seem very relaxed. The pizza place is located on the corner of the intersection, and the man in the bathrobe with the heavy artillery is walking past the pizza place, toward the cop, but neither one of them can see the other yet. We are parked across the street and have a clear view of both of them, and a pretty good idea of what is about to happen. Between the five of us, we are the only people still awake in the whole town, and two of us are a whole lot more awake than we were a minute ago.

The bathrobe-clad gentlemen rounded the corner and came into view of the police officer, and they saw each other at about the same time. We were positioned at just the wrong angle, so when the cop drew his weapon, he was pointing it right at us. We both did that thing where you slide down below the dashboard in case the bullets start flying, but foolishly keep your head up high enough to see, because you don’t want to miss the action.

The policeman immediately started asking the nice man to kindly set his shotgun down. By “kindly asking,” I mean he instantly began shouting, “Drop the #$*%&@ gun right now! Drop it, #$@*&%!!!” I thought he was handling himself very well given the surprising circumstance he had just found himself in. The bicyclist he had been talking to before the rude interruption did something that still to this day I cannot believe, even though I saw it with my own two barely-visible-above-the-dashboard eyes. He dropped his bike to the ground and fit himself completely underneath the front bumper of the police cruiser. Next time you see a police cruiser, take a look at the ground clearance. I think it might have been Houdini himself in that bike helmet.

Well, the nice man with the 12-gauge didn’t drop his gun right away. He just sort of stood there, trying to have a conversation with the cop. He was holding the gun at a 45 degree angle toward the ground, not exactly pointing it at the cop, but not exactly pointing it away from him, either. As the police officer walked closer and closer to the man, yelling commands louder and louder, I was sure we were about to witness something very unpleasant on what had, otherwise, been a really nice night.

Thankfully, for everyone involved, the man finally decided to set his shotgun gently on the ground, and seconds later, the police officer set his knee not-so-gently on the man’s neck, and the stand-off was over. As Captain Bathrobe was led to the police car and Harry Houdini extricated himself from underneath the Caprice Classic, I started the truck and drove my date home in stunned silence.

Fortunately, she didn’t hold the incident against me, and we continued to see each other. We searched the local paper for two weeks straight after that night for some mention of the incident, partially to prove to people that we weren’t making it up, but mostly to find out for ourselves what we had seen. Why was there a man firing a shotgun in sleepy, downtown San Luis Obispo, and why was he then walking the streets with that shotgun, barefoot, in a bathrobe? We never found a single mention of it, and to this day, have no idea what happened.

We graduated and parted ways, and met again six years later at a mutual college friend’s housewarming party. We have been together ever since. After meeting her father, I finally understood her knowledge of shotguns. And after getting to know my father-in-law, I have a strong suspicion that he and my wife might know more about that night than they are letting on. I know he owns a 12-gauge, and I’m pretty sure he owns a bathrobe.

Where exactly was he that night? Out looking for her, perhaps?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


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